Grouping by a multi-select list column

How to group by a multi-select column so that each group is based on unique items instead of unique combinations of items

Written by Justin Hales Updated over a week ago

When you group a table by a column that is a select list, and you also have "allow multiple selections" enabled on that column, you'll notice that each group is defined by unique combinations of items, rather than each unique item.

For example, let's say you have a doc for organizing your home movie collection. You can find the doc used for the example here (it's view only, but you can create a copy by clicking on the title of the doc and selecting "copy doc").

You've added multiple tags on each movie:

You then want to see all the movies for each tag. You create a view of the Movies table and group the view by the Tags column. Each group is based on a unique combination of tags, not the individual tags themselves:

You'll notice that the drama tag is repeated several times, each with a different combination of tags. This is useful for a lot of scenarios, but in your case you'd like to see each tag as a separate group.